Making last mile logistics models aware of customer choices, demand sustainability and data economy

By 2030, the rise of delivery vehicles in the ten most populated cities worldwide is expected to increase GHG emissions between 21% and 32%. This trend puts pressure on public and private stakeholders to take measures to improve the sustainability of last mile logistics in cities. The EU-project DECARBOMILE (DECARBOnize last MILE logistics) aims to develop interoperable and multimodal logistics solutions for decarbonized last mile delivery in urban contexts in the years 2022–2026. This study presents a new framework of last mile’s cause-and-effect chain to identify potential sustainable logistics solutions, hence embracing customer centricity. The latter is beyond the scope of conventional logistics management and makes it difficult to manage the subsequent drivers of last mile logistics and supply chain disruption: demand patterns and data valorization. The sustainability framework first maps the last mile challenges against the PI-oriented transport system model. With its sustainable performance criterion, the framework provides a standardized approach to prioritize actions for addressing the challenges and measuring their target impacts accordingly. As a conclusion of this study, the approach: (1) provides a standardized method to identify use cases to decarbonize the last mile logistics in different contexts, (2) supports the development of a stakeholder-focused, effective decision support system that enables to define, analyze, and compare scenarios based on sustainability targets, and (3) fosters the design and deployment of sustainable last mile systems as well as their replicability.